Sheet sorting machines of the type disclosed in my prior Application for United States Letters Patent, Ser. No. 506,526 filed Sept. 16, 1974, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,459, granted Feb. 10, 1976. Involved the use of a sheet transport means which is adapted to transport sheets successively through a path past a series or stack of spaced trays or bins into which the sheets are deflected by suitable deflector means. Such deflector means have typically been in the form of fingers or gates acuatable between open positions, at which a sheet is allowed to pass by and closed positions at which a sheet is deflected from the transport mechanism into a selected bin or tray.
In order to provide a sufficient number of bins or trays to sort large numbers of copies, a number of approaches have been taken, including enlarging the number of trays or bins in a given stack and increasing, correspondingly, the number of deflectors or gates or providing a modular structure in which a number of stacks of bins or trays are assembled in cooperative relation and means are provided for directing sheets to successive modules.
While either of the above prior approaches to the problem of increasing the capacity of sheet sorting apparatus is to some extent satisfactory, each approach involves inherent space problems.